[Elmore Leonard] is never more entertaining than when one of his villains is stealing a scene. They are inspired hams, these bad actors, so empty inside that they only become themselves when they are playing a part, milking it for all it's worth. There is therefore something desperate about their zest, which nevertheless releases our own. (Think of Laurence Olivier playing Richard III; think of Marlon Brando playing the bounty hunter in "The Missouri Breaks"; think of Orson Welles playing anything.) They are treacherous and tricky, smart enough to outsmart themselves, driven, audacious and outrageous, capable of anything, paranoid-cunning and casually vicious—and rousing fun. Mr. Leonard's villains upstage his heroes, who are sticks, and his heroines, who are as modish and blank as the dummies in Bloomingdale's windows.

The chief villain of "Stick" (a book named after its hero) is Charles Lindsay Gorman III, known on the...